RSS Feed MenuA new Daily Kos/Research 2000 poll of Republicans found that that 63% believe that President Obama is a socialist, compared to 21% who say he is not and 16% that are not sure. More troubling, though, is that the poll found that 53% of Republicans surveyed believe that Sarah Palin is more qualified to be president than Barack Obama. A meager 14% gawked at the outlandishness of the question and came to the rational conclusion that while no one will be mistaking Obama for Abe Lincoln anytime soon, the current president is certainly more qualified to hold such an esteemed and sacred office than the dimwitted Sarah Palin. 33% of our peers could not wrap their heads around the question and simply responded that they were not sure.
If you ran this poll among independents, it would be 80-20. All the more evidence that the mainstream of the Republican Party is startlingly out of touch with the mainstream of the country.
LFC // Feb 4, 2010 at 11:57 am
The results of this Rasmussen poll are fascinating. For half of Republicans, deficits really don’t matter, just like Dick Cheney said.
Fifty percent (50%) of conservatives are comfortable with a budget deficit if taxes are cut versus 63% of liberals who favor a balanced budget with higher taxes. But then 50% of conservative voters also think the federal budget can be balanced without a tax increase. Sixty-one percent (61%) of liberals say that’s impossible.
Be sure to read the rest. It shows that the average American really has absolutely no idea about how the economy works. Our federal government is quickly on its way to becoming California, bankrupt and ungovernable.
sinz54 // Feb 4, 2010 at 12:13 pm
WillyP: What I mean is that clearly he hasn’t reflected on the nature of government, and what makes a successful administration and an abysmal failure.
If Obama doesn’t know what makes a successful administration vs. a failed one, then he won’t have a successful administration in the sense that none of his agenda will get adopted. So what are you worried about?
He’ll be like Jimmy Carter, whose answer to energy shortages was a massive synthetic fuels program that never got passed either.
And with Obama, that’s becoming clearer every day: Health care reform is stalled; cap-and-trade is dead without such enormous concessions to moderates and conservatives that the left-wing in Congress will walk out; and immigration reform is deader than dead.
The type of liberal President that conservatives need to really worry about is someone like LBJ: A skilled political operator who knew how to use both the carrot and stick on Congress to ram through whatever legislation he wanted.
Obama is definitely no LBJ.
The only area where Obama’s incompetence CAN hurt us is in foreign and military policy, where a poor Commander-in-Chief can lead America into some awful trouble overseas (as Carter did).
And I am concerned about Obama on that score. But that wasn’t your argument.
sinz54 // Feb 4, 2010 at 12:26 pm
LFC: It shows that the average American really has absolutely no idea about how the economy works.
True.
Economics 101 is not something that most folks have learned in school.
As long as we’re discussing education:
Economics 101 (that Samuelson textbook) should be a required course in high school. I was lucky enough to go to a high school that offered an Economics 101 course. Back then, most others didn’t. Today, pressed by No Child Left Behind and other public pressure, many high schools are including at least units on economics as part of Social Studies. Let’s hope that trend continues.
balconesfault // Feb 4, 2010 at 1:23 pm
kevin: To Balcones
“If conservatives really believe in this program so strongly, they should be fully funding a national voucher program.”
No, conservatives should be supporting this at a state level, for ideological and practical reasons.
Again I ask – why the attack on Obama for ending Federal subsidies to vouchers in DC?
Either you favor Federal vouchers and Obama was wrong (although for consistencies sake you should then favor Federal vouchers at a wider scale than just to DC kids) …
Or you are opposed to Federal vouchers – and you should be cheering the Obama Administration efforts to phase out the program.
WillyP: There are plenty of idiots who rise to relatively high positions, and use their power to do all sorts of stupid things.
I certainly agree there. We have the Iraq War and the 2008 economic collapse as evidence.
Reagan didn’t have to contend with that; he got his tax cuts and military buildup passed in his first year, 1965. LBJ didn’t have to contend with that; he got Medicare passed in the first year of his term, in 1965.
Reagan didn’t have to contend with Democrats ready to filibuster any legislation he proposed.
LBJ had 68 Democrats in the Senate – if Obama had that I’d suspect we’d have healthcare reform passed already.
That said, Obama has been a fairly successful first year President. I know it’s to the Republican advantage to keep talking as if he’s been a failure, but he has had considerable success, particularly in rebuilding the competency of our regulatory agencies.
http://www.tnr.com/article/politics/the-quiet-revolution
GOProud // Feb 4, 2010 at 2:42 pm
BlankHead pines on “That said, Obama has been a fairly successful first year President. I know it’s to the Republican advantage to keep talking as if he’s been a failure, but he has had considerable success, particularly in rebuilding the competency of our regulatory agencies”.
I believe that maybe a direct quote from Jon Stewart being “interviewed” on The No Spin Zone last night. When he raised the canard that Obama’s 1st yr has been a success (LOL), OReilly asked him to name a single instance of success.
Jon Stewart claimed Obama’s “invigoration of the regulatory” role of the Feds was a big success. What a crock! We’re still waiting for the Democrats to finish up their secret meetings (not on C-SPAN) and craft a final banking bill, a final securities bill, a final health care slash death panel bill.
CentristNYer // Feb 4, 2010 at 4:19 pm
balconesfault // Feb 4, 2010 at 1:23 pm
“That said, Obama has been a fairly successful first year President. I know it’s to the Republican advantage to keep talking as if he’s been a failure…”
Sadly, this is true. The only way the modern Palin-Beck-McConnell-Boehner-Limbaugh GOP can look even remotely palatable is by scripting a false narrative.
balconesfault // Feb 4, 2010 at 7:26 pm
The interesting thing is that from a Constitutional perspective – Obama spent his first year on the job doing what a President is supposed to do.
He is supposed to make sure that the bureaucracies under the Executive Branch run well. By all accounts, he has done a good job at this, and an excellent job after you realize that the previous administration was drilling down into those organizations Heritage vetted operatives whose core belief is that government can’t work.
You might as well put Dennis Kucinich in charge of selecting all the political level appointees at the Pentagon.
Second, the President is in charge of the military. He is quietly withdrawing forces from Iraq in compliance with the schedule in the status of forces agreement, and contrary to the gloom-and-doom predictions by many we’re managing that withdrawal without taking hits on our forces as they become “weaker”. Early in the year he fulfilled his campaign pledge to put new combat divisions in Afghanistan, and then he worked out a plan to add significant new forces in for the next 18 months. All the while carrying out what seems to have been an aggressive and successful drone war campaign on Al Qaeda targets, matched by some excellent diplomacy to keep allies for not raising public hell about us conducting drone strikes within their borders.
He hasn’t been as successful at diplomacy as I’d like – although success in diplomacy is more difficult when you have Republican congressmen feeling free to fly around the world and make public declarations that intentionally subvert the Administration’s policies. It’s not a surprise in those cases that other countries are sitting on their hands waiting to make sure that they’re facing a unified US before making any trade or other concessions.
As for legislative agenda – he had done what he promised as far as proposing a very aggressive legislative agenda. It is the job of Harry Reid and Nancy Pelosi to craft the legislation and push it through Congress – and Republicans who dislike Harry Reid might be surprised to find that he doesn’t have much of a following among Democrats either, most considering him to be far too conciliatory and conservative to be effective at pushing through Obama’s proposals.
kevin47 // Feb 4, 2010 at 8:00 pm
“Again I ask – why the attack on Obama for ending Federal subsidies to vouchers in DC?”
Because Obama has no fundamental problem with federal funding of education. Isn’t that what this whole blog is about? Playing the game as the rules are presently written? Not letting the perfect get in the way of the possible?
That said, if Obama were to support eliminating federal control of public schools generally, I think conservatives would have little problem if the DC voucher program fell victim as well.
To that end, I wouldn’t mind a wider voucher program.
balconesfault // Feb 5, 2010 at 8:59 am
“Again I ask – why the attack on Obama for ending Federal subsidies to vouchers in DC?”
Because Obama has no fundamental problem with federal funding of education.
So? You’re either in favor of federal funded vouchers, or you’re against them. It seems very inconsistent to me to say “well, if we’re going to have federal support for public school education, then it’s a tragedy that we don’t provide federal funds to ensure that some small number of children in DC can attend private schools.”
To that end, I wouldn’t mind a wider voucher program.
OK. There’s consistency. The Republicans shouldn’t be complaining that the DC program is being phased out – but should be aggressively pushing for Federal vouchers for all schoolchildren across America.
Although you might want to means test that proposal.